Betsy's Page
Gerald Walpin has a great column in the Wall Street Journal about the hypocrisy of all those universities who want to keep the military from recruiting students on their campuses but still keep all the lovely money that the federal government gives to colleges.
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Imagine a college accepting your donation, then saying that you cannot have the same access to the school as all other alumni--but that you must continue making donations. Unbelievable? But that is what most law schools now claim: The U.S. government must continue funding universities to the tune of hundreds of millions, despite their decision to deny military recruiters the same access to students granted to all other recruiters.
....Plaintiffs in this case--an association of 38 law schools and law faculties--argue that equal access violates their free speech rights. This is baseless: Military recruiters on campus, while this lawsuit has been winding its way through the courts, have invariably been met by demonstrations in which administrators, faculty and students have openly exercised their free speech rights to oppose military policy. In essence, the law schools claim that, because of their disagreement with a military policy, they have a right to prevent students who wish to hear from the military.
It is the antithesis of academic freedom for one group of faculty and students to prevent the communication of a message that other students wish to hear. As the Supreme Court explained in Rosenberger v. Rector,
"The quality and creative power of student intellectual
life . . . remains a vital measure of a school's influence
and attainment. For the university . . . to cast disapproval
on particular viewpoints . . . risks the suppression of
free speech and creative inquiry in . . . its college and
university campuses."
Likewise, plaintiffs' claim--that their freedom of association is violated by forcing the universities to endorse military policy, merely because the military recruiters are treated the same as hundreds of other recruiters--is contrary to reality. No one believes that a law school endorses any or all of the recruiters who participate in its annual employment fair. This is obvious from the fact that, for example, legal groups on both sides of the abortion issue can have recruiters at a law school. A law school merely acts as a clearinghouse to allow students to meet with those recruiters whose messages each student wishes to hear. Again, the Supreme Court held in Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens that
"students are mature enough and are likely to understand
that a school does not endorse or support . . . speech
that it merely permits on a nondiscriminatory basis."
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If the colleges win on this one, it will be such a disappointment for this Supreme Court. I'm hopeful that good sense will prevail, but who knows?
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